The invention relates to chain-making machines, particularly suited for jewelry and the like application, wherein the chain product comprises links of different style and/or shape in a predetermined sequentially connected pattern.
Prior machines of the character indicated are exemplified by Tega, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,987 and by pending Tega, patent application Ser. No. 877,559, filed Feb. 13, 1978 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,175,379. In machines according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,127,987, first and second auxiliary camshafts are each set up to form a different wire-link size or shape, and a main camshaft determines the pattern in which one or the other of the auxiliary camshafts is to be operative in a program of interlacing the operative status of one to the exclusion of the other auxiliary camshafts, to form a sequence of the different links, in correspondingly interlaced sequence. In machines according to said patent application, a separate counterpliers system is associated with each of two different wire-feeding systems, and a main camshaft provides timed control of the rectilineal shuttling of a pliers unit (and, thereby, the most recently formed link of completed chain) between a first position of association with one counterpliers system and a second position of association with the other counterpliers system.
These and other prior machines of the indicated character have all necessarily operated upon wire as the basic input material, and they have not lent themselves to production of chains of flat links, i.e., from input material other than wire; nor have they lent themselves to production of chains with selectively rounded links and/or selectively square-ended links.